The Fool on the Hill: The election, and after

The Losers

The first thing to say about the 2024 General Election result is this: Labour lost, and lost badly. They lost, in fact, half a million votes compared to their 2019 result; they lost three million votes when compared to their 2017 result. They also failed to win anything remotely resembling a majority of the popular vote.

In fact, all of the major parties, including the Liberal Democrats, lost votes. Labour just lost less badly than either the Conservatives or the SNP.

The biggest winner, of course, was Nigel Farage, the owner of Reform UK Party Limited, formerly THE BREXIT PARTY LIMITED (no, I am not making this up). Farage's company increased its vote by 535%. The other parties which won were the Green Party of England and Wales (which increased its vote by 132%), Plaid Cymru, and Sinn Féin. No other party which won any seats at all saw an increase in its vote. Some independents did, of course, in the nature of standing as independents for the first time (although Jeremy Corbyn's vote, as an independent, at 24,120, was lower than his previous vote when standing for Labour, at 34,603).

But all other parties lost votes.

Keeping it in proportion

Obviously, the UK's First Past The Post electoral system always produces skewed results, but 2024's were the most skewed ever. Across the UK, Labour won two thirds (64%) of the seats in the House of Commons on one third (34%) of the votes cast; by contrast, Reform UK and the Green Party of England and Wales each won 1% of the seats, on 14% and 7% of the votes cast, respectively.

In any election in a reasonably democratic voting system — such as that used for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd, for example — the number of seats in the resulting parliament assigned to a party is proportional to the number seats they won. So any party or coalition capable of forming a government must have a proportion of the vote close to, or exceeding, a majority. Britain isn't like that, of course. Britain isn't a well-functioning anything at all, still less a well functioning democracy.

It's worth pointing out here, that under a proportional system, a Green/Labour/Liberal Democrat/SNP coalition could have formed a government after every single election in the twenty-first century, although 2015 would have been tight. There could have been no Tory governments, no austerity, no Brexit.

The Overton window slides again

The second thing is that all those parties that lost votes will now tack right. Labour's right wingers are in the ascendant (falsely) claiming a victory — and will have to contrast themselves against a group of Greens and independents to their left.

The less toxic Tory MPs have disproportionately lost their seats, leaving more extreme Tories; who will seek to reclaim votes from Reform. The Liberal Democrats will target more ex-Tories. And the SNP will try to win votes back from Labour.

The third thing is that — at least here — the poorest and most disadvantaged had lowest turnout. Now, you may say that the lumpenproletariat never vote, that they are systematically uninformed, that that's their choice, and so on. But none of the parties had an offering that was attractive to the marginalised, and that was their choice.

In fact 40% of people who had bothered to register as voters didn't vote at all, which is larger than the number who voted for the "winning" party. There's lots of votes to be won there. This is illustrated by the fact that in constituencies where there were notable left candidates, turnout was higher:

1. Chingford and Woodford Green (Faiza Shaheen) 65%;
2. Islington North (Corbyn) 67%;

(I haven't yet found anyone who has collated turnout data by constituency so these results are cherry-picked — they do support my theory but they are not conclusive)

To those responding saying 'well, actually, Labour did win because they've got the majority of seats in Westminster': no.

The Labour party won one third of the votes (34%) in an election in which under two thirds (60%) of the electorate voted. Only one in five (20.4%) registered electors in Britain support this government. It has no mandate to do anything. If it tries to do anything radical, then, as Thatcher did with the poll tax, it will find the difference between Westminster games and real politics.

To govern, you need consent.

The news where you are

In Scotland, Labour won, again, two thirds (66%) of the seats on a third (35.7%) of the votes, but the SNP won very nearly a third (30%) of the votes and were assigned only 16% of the seats. And Reform UK, who won 6.9% of the votes in Scotland, won no seats at all here.

Thanks to Ballot Box Scotland, Election Maps UK, the Electoral Reform Society, Wikipedia, and others for data.

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